Before you set up your first aquarium or pond

If you want to set up your first aquarium or pond, it is to be hoped that the purchase of the equipment and fishes has not yet occurred. If you have already bought your supplies and livestock, it may be too late to be reading this. For those who are already aquarium owners and who have not yet acquired the fishes and other animals will probably find the following very helpful. For those who have already setup their first aquarium and/or pond and have the fishes and other animals in place should read this section to understand what changes may need to be made to insure long-term success.

As with any hobby, one should precede relatively slowly until proficient enough to both pursue the hobby and enjoy it. Aquarium and pond keeping is unlike other hobbies and, indeed, unlike other pet ownership. Pursuit of the aquarium and pond keeping has never been a big problem aside from cost. The pet industry has recognized for years that large numbers of people get into the aquarium hobby every year. However, the aquarium industry has also recognized that following a single bad experience (usually fish deaths) a generous percentage of new aquarium hobbyists leave the hobby. In general, the retention rate has been very poor and the population of aquarists changes dramatically about every six months. The loss of significant pond hobbyists is different in the fact that once a large hole in the ground has been dug that one is loath to simply rip out everything and cover it over.

The reason for this high turn over rate among new aquarists is due to many factors but the fault lies with both the hobbyists (if an aquarium owner who has been one for six months of less can be called a “hobbyist”) and the industry that serves the hobby. The hobbyist falls into the trap of instant gratification. It is not unusual for a person or family wanting to acquire and aquarium to walk into a shop and walk out, an hour or less later, with everything, including live fishes, needed to set up an aquarium. More commonly, and luckily for the fishes and other animals to be placed into the aquarium, the first aquarium and equipment will be purchased one day and then, following the aquarium’s setup, the fishes will be purchased a few days later.

Anyway, before setting up one's first aquarium or pond study the subject thoroughly. For every hour spent reading and studying aquarium and pond books and periodicals one will be saved weeks of grief and the enjoyment will be extended by years. The use of the Internet, is of course, as given, but one must be well-equipped to winnow the wheat from the chaff on the 'net. This requires that one be conversant with the basic literature so that the overwhelming volume of crud on the Internet will be rightly rejected. I have a presentation I make to aquarium and pond societies on behalf of my company AquaScience Research Group, Inc. and, on rare occasions, for the American Cichlid Association. The presentation is a PowerPoint program (it was usually made using either slides or overhead transparencies). The next to last "slide" is entitled “The ‘right’ way to set up and maintain (the first) aquarium.” Point number one is “buy a good book.”

The most important reason to become educated about aquariums or ponds and the inhabitants kept in them is the inhabitants. If the animals, usually fishes, being housed in an aquarium or pond are not afforded the same care and consideration we give to our warn-blooded pets (dogs, cat and birds), then we have no business acquiring them in the first place. As the aquarium hobby comes under ever growing scrutiny by often well-meaning but sometimes misguided animal rights and environmental activists (I am both!) it becomes more likely that both the hobby and the industry will suffer.

There are individuals, national and international groups and even governmental agencies that would be quite happy if the domestic and international trade in aquarium species ended today. There is concern around the world for threatened and endangered species and the effects the worldwide trade in aquarium and pond species may have on these animals (and to a lesser extent, on plants). If one can ignore the economic impact such a cessation would have on domestic and foreign economies (not to mention individuals and their families). An end to aquarium keeping would mean that generations to come would lose the positive influence that a close relationship with an actual alien organism can bring. Successful aquarium keeping is highly rewarding and it instructs us in a way of life that our personal, dry land, air breathing, warm-blooded existence cannot. Aquarium and pond keeping are educational.

To reiterate a previous point, I doubt that there are many committed environmentalists who were not aquarists at an early age. Aquarium and pond keeping breeds a respect for life and its fragility. Aquarists learn to respect the cause and effect relationships that means the difference between a healthy and sustainable aquarium or pond and failures with prematurely dead or dying plants and animals.

==JFK==